Love, Devotion & Compassion

Param Pujya Guruji once told me that the greatest conviction in life is the fact that we are loved; nay, that we are loved in spite of ourselves.  Jesus Christ said, “Love thy neighbour”.  The ancient Indian sages and  seers of this wonderful land (Bharat) had a very wide vision and expounded the doctrine of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (that the entire world is one family) and we all are children of the same Lord – Jeevatma and the Brahmatma.

Love begins with two, but  ultimately one  merges  into the other.  There are no conditions in real love.  It’s only condition is purity and piety.  Wherever these basic elements are missing, love is reduced to sensuous desires and it merely becomes a network of words.  Real love and compassion sprout and nurture at a much deeper level of pure feelings. 

Love demands sacrifice.  He only can love who can sacrifice.  Feelings of pure love urge you to give and it continues to flow without any obstruction.  Real love does not ask for anything in return.  The one who loves is not a beggar.  He is large-hearted like a cloud and showers nectar at the slightest warmth.  Only that person who offers himself in entirety  can  be a  subject of love.   Partial  offer  or expectation  of  something  in  return  reduces  love  to mere trading, and love is not trading.

Let us remember, the moment you sow the seeds of reciprocation,  you are  tied down to a feeling of expectation, which results in unhappiness and   discontent  in   the  event  of   not getting the desired fruits of one’s action.  In  such a situation, the sublime act of love and compassion is reduced to mere trading.    Alas! In today’s context, love and compassion without reward have become meaningless and the intense desire to have something in return has reduced human beings to beggars.

One of the basic objects of human birth is to render selfless service to others, to relieve others of their sufferings and to find happiness in others’ happiness.  The act of expressing love and compassion without expecting anything in return is complete in itself.  When there is  no feeling of ‘karta’ (the doer) in the act and no desire to reap its fruits,  then such an act is fulfilling both to the giver and the recipient.  It is a different story that by the law of nature, whatever we give multiplies manifold and comes back to us in abundance.

Mother Nature has umpteen number of examples to prove that she only gives and does not ever expect anything in return.  She  provides  us  the very  basic elements  for our  survival  (earth, space, water, air, light, heat, vegetation, medicinal herbs…..the  list  is  endless) and yet never ever asks for anything in return.  The Lord Himself says, “I am not the ‘Karta’, nor am I  the  ‘bhogta’.  Then how can the ‘jeevatma’, which is an inseparable part of ‘Brahmatma’’, be different from its root-source?

     People who live at the level of body, senses and mind, tend to restrict the significance of love and compassion.  More often than not, they get involved in ego-centric desires and try to derive pleasures and pains from sensuous objects,  which are temporary and fleeting.  For them, love and compassion is a way of humouring their whims and fancies. Such persons do not even hesitate to jeopardize  an age-old or a close relationship on some trivial pretext, when their wishes are not fulfilled.  How sad, they seem to have lost the meaning of  love that gives life  everything in its entirety and  devotion that overwhelms the inner-self with compassion. They need to graduate from the level of corporal frame and senses to the level of conscious.

Once, Lord Krishna, preoccupied with his work at Dwarka, was not able to go to Vrindavan to meet Radha  and the ‘sakhis’.  Instead, he sent his friend, Udhav, along with a communication to Radha explaining his inability to come.  Perceiving the agony of separation from Krishna, that  Radha  and  the ‘sakhis’ were  suffering  from,  Udhav tried to enlighten them with ‘Jnanyoga’.  “Which   agony  of  separation   are   you   talking   about,  Udhavji?  Krishna has always been with us.  If you wish to see Krishna, see him in me”.  And Radha manifested Krishna in herself.  Krishna lived in her mind and consciousness.  It does not really matter whether Lord Krishna  is  physically  in  Dwarka,   but in spirit  He lives with  Radha  and  the  ‘sakhis’.   Such  is  the  intensity  of love and  devotion that you  forget  your  own   entity  and  merge  with  the  loved one  -  that  is,  in reality,  true  love, devotion and compassion.

God created this universe and mankind with  a sense of  dedication  and  with  a spirit of sacrifice. At the beginning of creation, the Creator, Lord Brahma, gave the following advice to our first ancestors: “May you multiply and prosper with this spirit of sacrifice (free from attachment); may this yield the enjoyments you seek.  Foster each other with a sense of sacrifice and let the Gods be gracious to you.  Thus fostering each other unselfishly, you will attain the highest good….”                         

The important words are sacrifice and foster.  A mother fostering a child is a unique example of sacrifice, love and compassion.  Interestingly, when you render service to your fellow-beings with a sense of sacrifice (without expecting anything in return) and when your act of ‘’sewa’’ (selfless  service)  is performed  with love and compassion, you establish an unbreakable bond of ‘bhavana’ with them, which  is  gratifying  both  to  the  giver  and  the  recipient. Such an act of a ‘karamyogi’ generates ‘satoguna’ and the all pervading infinite is always present where such ‘karmas’ are being performed.

When you perform an act with love and compassion, relinquishing all attachment, as if to do so is your ‘swadharma’, then you are freed from the bondage of expectation (attachment to the fruit of action) and the act becomes a ‘yajna’, which opens the doors to salvation – the eternal quest of any human being.